Irish Spend Billions in Uk Property Spree

It's the second Irish invasion of Britain. The descendants of the Irish workers who built the housing estates, the roads, the airports and the shopping centres of postwar Britain are taking over. In the last 18 months, billions of pounds have been spent by Irish investors, many of them from post-ceasefire Northern Ireland, buying up vast quantities of commercial and residential property in England and Scotland.

According to Irish banks and leading property consultants on the island, Ireland's entrepreneurs have taken on and beaten foreign investors like the Saudis and the Germans in the acquisition war across the Irish Sea.

The properties that have fallen into Irish hands over the last year and a half include:

· Blackpool and Wolverhampton airports, bought for £15m.

· Twenty shopping centres throughout England, Scotland and Wales, costing a total of £1.55bn.

· The high-profile Wolseley restaurant, near the Ritz in central London, for which a private individual from Northern Ireland paid £11m.

A new report by the property consultants BTWshiels has found that Northern Irish investors have become 'aggressive' in buying up properties across mainland Britain.

It discovered that almost one fifth of all property investors in the UK are now Irish, compared with only three years ago when the figure was just 10 per cent. Keith Shiels, of BTWshiels, puts the surge in Northern Irish investment into Britain down to post-ceasefire prosperity.

'The market over here has hit a ceiling. Those that acquired property in the last six years of boom here don't want to sell it. There is virtually no turnover any more in Northern Ireland, unlike in Great Britain. That's why the local investor is looking eastward across the Irish Sea.'

Among the buyouts BTWshiels has overseen for a Northern Ireland investor has been the Fosse Retail Park near Leicester. It cost £360m last year - the largest property deal by an individual in the UK. Another setpiece sale, Greenlanes Shopping Centre, in Barnstaple, Devon, cost a private Northern Ireland investor £43m in 2004. Last year he sold it for £57m.

One of those who have invested millions in commercial property on the other side of the Irish Sea is Belfast property developer Adam Armstrong. He was back in Britain this weekend attending the Grand National at Aintree. The horse Armstrong co-owns, Monty's Pass, won the world famous race in 2003. Armstrong has also gambled and won on the British commercial property scene.

'My partners and I bought Blackpool and Wolverhampton airports 15 months ago for around £15m and already the investment is paying off,' he said.

'Since we bought Blackpool from the local council, Ryanair and Jet2.com have established a presence at the airport. There are now 17 new routes into Europe with the airlines operating from there.'

Armstrong also owns 500 acres around Blackpool airport, which could be the location for the UK's first Super Casino if the government grants the licence to the Lancashire coastal resort.

The largest lender to Northern Ireland investors in Britain, the Bank of Ireland, described the eastward investment as being 'on an exponential curve'. David Service, head of property for the Bank of Ireland in northern England, said the business has handled up to £2bn pounds in property deals in Britain.

Across the Irish border in the Republic the new investors into mainland Britain are not just the millionaire property tycoons, but ordinary homeowners and even first-time buyers.

A month ago Edinburgh-based Lara MacMillan set up a website aimed at selling properties in the Scottish capital, including to Irish people who can't afford to buy a house or an apartment in Dublin.

MacMillan, a former Dublin-based property journalist, said: 'Since the website was launched we have had enquiries from around 250 people, which is an incredible response. Many of them cannot afford to buy in Dublin but can acquire a property in Edinburgh instead, which they will be able to use for rental income.

'We have also had calls from parents whose children are looking at going to university in Edinburgh. Their parents often have untapped equity on their homes in Ireland which they want to release and help their children as well.'

The BTWshiels report's authors also predict that the Irish money currently flowing by the billions into the British market will head further east over the next year.

A poster on the front window of a local mortgage shop on Belfast's Ormeau Road on Friday appeared to confirm this suggestion. It read: 'Dream Homes and Investments in Bulgaria.'